New standards are meant to 'help' merchants, but experts say they are more about protecting credit card companies

In the ongoing cat-and-mouse game over the protection of credit card data, the Payment Card Industry's (PCI) stated goal for its 700-plus participants - card companies, banks, payment processors, hardware and software developers, merchants and assessors - is to avoid being the mice.

Or, at the least, for them and millions of individual card holders to be very well-protected mice.